Cylinder of the Month

For June 1998 . . .

This month:
From 1891, an early brown wax cylinder recording, Five Minutes With the Minstrels played by Voss's First Regiment Band.

Five Minutes With the Minstrels

Company

North American Phonograph Company

Cylinder #

None

Category

Band

Title

Five Minutes With the Minstrels

Performed by

(Voss's) The First Regiment Band

Circa

October 2, 1891

Announcement

"Five Minutes With the Minstrels, played by the First Regiment Band at Orange, New Jersey."

This record can be precisely placed and dated,
thanks to a logbook kept from May 1889 through April 1892
by Edison's sound recording engineer, A. Theo E. Wangemann.
In his logbook, "The First Book of Phonograph Records, Edison Laboratory", Wangemann
details the earliest recording sessions during the birth of the wax recording industry.

On October 2, 1891 during the 15th round of recording that day,
F. Voss's First Regiment Band recorded this cylinder.
The recording is announced as being done "at Orange, New Jersey".
Doubtless, that would be Edison's Laboratory at West Orange, New Jersey,
and very likely specifically in the laboratory's music room
(to learn more, click here).
Incidentally, according the archive staff at the
Edison National Historic Site,
Orange was often cited instead of West Orange possibly because neighboring Orange
was the better known locale, plus the area post office was in Orange.

This is an original recording (not a copy from another record)
 best listened to with headphones  with a strong bass (as low as 115Hz)
and a great ambient feel, despite the surface noises
(which, in this case, are not due to mold or mildew but to wear from
repeated plays of the very soft wax which is common in these early brown wax records).

Most recordings of this era have not survived.
Being produced for the coin-in-the-slot
nickelodeon arcades, they were often "played to death", then redeemed by
the arcade operators 
the worn wax recordings making their way back to the manufacturer's wax vat to be made into
new blanks for the next go around.

Although, not actually "Five Minutes With the Minstrels" 
it's really 2½ minutes with a band medley 
we can still enjoy, after more than 105 years, this nifty and well-recorded number.